Virgin Galactic's first space trip could be this fall
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| Suborbital, private joyrides will cost $200,000 a ticket A private spaceship built to launch space tourists on suborbital joyrides could by flying on its own by this fall, Space.com has learned. The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft VSS Enterprise, which the space tourism company Virgin Galactic has been flying on test flights attached to a huge mothership, could make its first drop flights over California's Mojave Desert for glide and landing tests. "There's a reasonable possibility that we could see the first drop flight in the fall, but as always, everything is predicated on thoroughness and safety," Virgin Galactic's commercial director Stephen Attenborough... |
Baby Stars Found in Galactic Center
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| PASADENA, CALIF. — Baby stars have at last been found in the harsh environment at the center of the Milky Way, astronomers said here this week at the 214th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. These are "stars that have just ignited their core and they are just starting to produce light. So it is a very early phase in the star formation process," said team member Solange Ramirez of NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. The heart of our galaxy is an extreme environment, with fierce stellar winds, shock waves and a core supermassive black hole all packed into... |
Monster galactic cluster seen in deep Universe: European agency
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| PARIS (AFP) – An orbiting observatory has spotted a massive cluster of galaxies in deep space that can only be explained by the exotic phenomenon known as dark energy, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday. Spotted in a scan by ESA's orbiting X-ray telescope XMM-Newton, the cluster's mass is about 1,000 times that of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, it said. The huge cluster, known by its catalogue number of 2XMM J083026+524133, lies 7.7 billion light years from Earth and helps confirm the existence of dark energy, the agency said. Under this hypothesis, most of the Universe... |
Stellar Birth in the Galactic Wilderness
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars sprouting in the backwoods of a galaxy -- a relatively desolate region of space more than 100,000 light-years from the galaxy's bustling center. The striking image, a composite of ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and radio data from the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array in New Mexico, shows the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, also known simply as M83. In the new view, the main spiral, or stellar, disk of M83 looks like a pink and blue pinwheel, while its outer arms appear to flap away from the... |
An Antimatter Cloud Around Galactic Center
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| [...snip...] But on to antimatter, a cloud of which has been known to exist around the galactic center since the 1970s, when balloon-based gamma-ray detectors first located it. Gamma rays are significant in terms of antimatter because electrons encountering positrons (their antimatter equivalent) annihilate each other, with their mass converted into high energy gamma rays. So the cloud’s presence is well established. The question since its detection is what could have caused it. Now a new paper in Nature may offer an answer, noting the asymmetric distribution of the antimatter cloud, which extends further on one side of galactic center... |
Cosmic ray mystery solved?
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| Universe's most energetic particles point to huge black holesThe most energetic particles in the universe – ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays – likely come from supermassive black holes in the hearts of nearby active galaxies, says a study by scientists from nearly 90 research institutions worldwide, including the University of Utah. “We discovered the sources of the highest energy particles in the universe,” says Miguel Mostafa, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah and one of 370 scientists and engineers belonging to a 17-nation collaboration that operates the $54 million Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. “The sources are the... |
A Stunning Demonstration of Why Good Science Needs Good Math
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| Everyone is scientific circles is abuzz with the big news: there's proof that dark matter exists! The paper from the scientists who made the discovered is here; and a Sean Carroll (no relation) has a very good explanation on his blog, Cosmic Variance. This discovery happens to work as a great example of just why good science needs good math. As I always say, one of the ways to recognize a crackpot theory in physics is by the lack of math. For an example, you can look at the electric universe folks. They have a theory, and they make predictions:... |
Startling Galactic Highway Found in Milky Way
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| CALGARY, ALBERTA--A newly detected stream of stars festoons the northern sky in a sweeping arc that cuts across the entire constellation of Ursa Major (through the Big Dipper), from just above the head of Leo the lion to the constellation Cancer the crab. Although it spans fully 63 degrees (one-third of the northern celestial hemisphere), the star stream escaped notice until now because its individual stars are far too faint to see with the naked eye. Also, they don't jump out as a readily discernible shape or pattern, like a cluster or constellation, amid the surrounding star fields. To snare... |
Galactic pancake mystery solved
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| Astronomers have figured out why a series of small galaxies surrounding the Milky Way are distributed around it in the shape of a pancake. Theorists believed that the eleven dwarf galaxy companions should have a diffuse, spherical arrangement. But a University of Durham team used a supercomputer to show how the galaxies could take the pancake form without challenging cosmological theory. The results were presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting. According to cosmological theory, soon after the Big Bang, cold dark matter formed the first large structures in the Universe, which then collapsed under their own weight to form... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 2-06-03
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
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| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 February 6 X-Rays from M83 Credit: R.Soria & K.Wu (MSSL, UCL) CXC, NASA Explanation: Bright and beautiful spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years from Earth, toward the headstrong constellation Hydra. Sweeping spiral arms, prominent in visible light images, lend this galaxy its popular moniker -- the Southern Pinwheel. In fact, the spiral arms are still apparent in this Chandra Observatory false-color x-ray image of... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 1-08-03
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 8 X-Rays from the Galactic Core Credit: Fred Baganoff (MIT), Mark Morris (UCLA), et al., CXC, NASA Explanation: Using the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have taken this long look at the core of our Milky Way galaxy, some 26,000 light-years away. The spectacular false-color view spans about 130 light-years. It reveals an energetic region rich in x-ray sources and high-lighted by the central source, Sagittarius... |
Milky Way's Star 'Doughnut'
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Monday, 6 January, 2003, 17:58 GMTMilky Way's star 'doughnut' A ring of stars surrounds the Milky Way A vast, but previously unknown structure has been discovered around the edges of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The first large area surveys of the sky have revealed several hundred million stars surrounding the galaxy's main disc. The ring, which has the appearance of a giant doughnut, could be the remains of a satellite galaxy. Astronomers believe it could hold clues as to how the Milky Way and other galaxies evolved. Giant doughnutAn international team of astronomers looked at images of the Milky... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 12-23-02
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 December 23 Stars and Dust Through Baade's Window Credit & Copyright: David Malin (AAO), ROE, UKS Telescope Explanation: Billions of stars light up the direction toward the center of our Galaxy. The vast majority of these stars are themselves billions of years old, rivaling their home Milky Way Galaxy in raw age. These stars are much more faint and red than the occasional young blue stars that... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 10-18-02
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 18 At the Center of the Milky Way Credit: Rainer Schödel (MPE) et al., NACO, ESO Explanation: At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies a black hole with over 2 million times the mass of the Sun. Once a controversial claim, this astounding conclusion is now virtually inescapable and based on observations of stars orbiting very near the galactic center. Using one of the... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 7-10-02
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 10 M51: Cosmic Whirlpool Credit & Copyright: Tony and Daphne Hallas Explanation: Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper's bowl, until you get to the handle's last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll likely find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula,... |
Astronomy Picture of the Day 6-1-02
Monday 28th of May 2012 07:07:56 AM
Posted by admin / Under Galactic Pinball
| Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 1 NGC 2266: Old Cluster in the New General Catalog Credit: Till Credner & Sven Kohle, Bonn University Explanation: The New General Catalog of star clusters and nebulae really isn't so new. In fact, it was published in 1888 - an attempt by J. L. E. Dreyer to consolidate the work of astronomers William, Caroline, and John Herschel along with others into a useful single, complete... |
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